Thursday, January 21, 2010

SCOTUS and CONGRESS ABOLISH DEMOCRACY

Just hours ago, the Supreme Court gave Corporate America a green light to use its immense wealth to buy elected officials.

The court's shocking decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission struck down 60 years of legal precedent prohibiting corporations from making campaign expenditures to attack or support political candidates.

The court ruled that the First Amendment - designed to protect the speech of real, live humans - guarantees for-profit corporations the right to influence elections.

This is nothing short of a massive assault on the very foundation of American democracy.

Please watch this special video on what Public Citizen is doing in response to the Supreme Court's decision. Then sign our Citizen's Free Speech Petition calling for a constitutional amendment ensuring corporate power doesn't overwhelm our democracy. And forward my email to your family and friends so they can join our campaign, too.

We must fight back. The lines are clearly drawn. PEOPLE V. CORPORATIONS.

That's why Public Citizen is launching a historic campaign to pass a constitutional amendment on behalf of human beings. To restore human beings to the center of the political process. To say no to unfettered corporate power. And we need your help.

In the wake of the court's decision, corporations can pour virtually unlimited amounts of cash into political campaigns. If candidates challenge the corporate agenda, they will be buried under mountains of corporate cash. If candidates do the bidding of a corporation, they will be rewarded from corporate America's bottomless treasury.

The only surefire solution to a corporate takeover of American democracy is a constitutional amendment re-establishing that First Amendment protections (except for freedom of the press) do not apply to for-profit corporations.

Corporations are not human beings. Corporations should not be free to use their massive concentrations of financial power to drown out the voices of real people.

Please watch this special video on what Public Citizen is doing in response to the Supreme Court's decision.

After watching the short video, you can take immediate action by signing the Citizen's Free Speech Petition and stand with your fellow humans against corporate power.

And I need you to forward my email to your friends and family. Urge them to watch the video and sign the Citizen's Free Speech Petition, too.

In the coming weeks and months, you will be hearing more about Public Citizen's nationwide mobilization to protect the speech of human beings. You will be asked to participate, agitate and organize. The framers of the Constitution did not intend for the First Amendment to apply to for-profit corporations, and it shouldn't. We are not now going to surrender our democratic institutions to the control of powerful corporations.Help us fight back.

Please watch this special video on what Public Citizen is doing in response to the Supreme Court's decision. Then sign the petition and forward this email to all your friends and family members.

Join Public Citizen's grassroots mobilization. Help us take back our democracy.Join the campaign!

Robert Weissman, President

P.S. Please watch this special video on how you can take action. Then sign our Citizen's Free Speech Petition and urge your friends to do the same. Together, we can restore citizens' control to our political system and ensure corporate power doesn't overwhelm our democracy by amending our constitution to protect the free speech rights of citizens.

My own comments with regard to this outrage are inadequate. Nothing I might say is more to the point or more appropriate than the following from Che Guevara's treatise on Guerilla Warfare:

People must see clearly the futility of maintaining the fight for social goals within the framework of civil debate. When the forces of oppression come to maintain themselves in power against established law; peace is considered already broken.

"Today, the U.S. Supreme Court announced a landmark victory for free speech, making clear in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission that under the First Amendment the government cannot stifle dissent by restricting the right of corporations to spend money on independent political speech."

--U.S. Supreme Court Rules in Favor of Free Speech In Citizens United Case

BULLSHIT!

Corporations are not people! Granting them rights that, by right, belong only to real, living, breathing, thinking people is nonsense and sophistry. I smell the work of a GOP consulting firm and focus group.

Secondly, people cannot match the amount of money's available to corporations to buy governmental 'winks and nods' or sway elections unfairly for venal corporate causes. SCOTUS has now given corporations --mere legal abstractions --the 'right' to BUY their politicians, political whores inside and around the government, on the open market!

POLITICAL PROSTITUTION

The GOP wrecked the economy, transferred wealth to just one percent of the population. Now the GOP has the nerve --the un-mitigated gaul -- to legalize political prostitution by making bribery by corporations legal. What venal sophistry! The government of the US is no longer legitimate. Revolution!

The fascist domination of American life and debate is possible because people have 'bought into' the pernicious notion of 'corporate personhood'. This notion facilitates More's 'conspiracy of rich men'.

Corporations are given license to lie about misdeeds, incompetence and corporate criminality, literally, a 'conspiracy of rich men: the Tea Baggers and idiots who have bought into it; and the GOP consultants, firms, and focus groups who dreamed it all up, the liars whose offices line K-Street.

Don't try to peddle the bullshit story that this is a victory for 'free speech'. Rather --this is the DEATH of it!

Why I moderate comments

SPAM: 'comments' that link to junk, 'get rich' schemes, scams, and nonsense! These are the worst offenders.

Ad hominem attacks: 'name calling' and 'labeling'. That includes the ad hominem: 'truther' or variations!